Pinguy: My Linux Adventure Starts Here.

[garth]

Today is the day i finally start to delve into the world of Linux, and i've decided to try and make it as painless as possible. To that end i've selected Pinguy (an Ubuntu variant) as my distro of choice, as suggested by MC. I've decided to run it off a live dvd initially while i find my way around it, and i will document my experiences with it right here on this thread.
I've decided to go with Pinguy (rather than the Linux Mint i've had kicking around for months) because, according to the Pinguy site, it's pretty much perfect for a Linux noob like myself, due to it's being supplied with a fair few everyday applications and utilities pre-installed.

So anyway, i've been playing with it for a about 45 minutes and had to abandon it while i figure out how to get rid of the ridiculous system monitor thing that's taking up half my desktop and has no obvious off switch. In fairness, it (Pinguy) loaded up without a hitch, looks nice and, so far, runs smoothly enough on my Asus AMD dual core laptop, but the system monitor is driving me slightly nuts because it is always topmost no matter what i do. The fact that the help file doesn't seem to exist isn't...well....helping. Another initial minor niggle is the fact that while my windows based portable app launcher works just fine, my mobile broadband does not, or at least for all intents and purposes it doesn't since while the device itself is recognised by Pinguy, i can't figure out how to launch the application to run the device. Hopefully these initial hassles are fixable and i can get down to giving this OS a proper workout since, hassles aside, i like what i've seen so far and am looking forward to continuing the adventure

[MidnightCowboy]

To get rid of the system monitor, find "Conky" in your apps menu then click "kill Conky"

[MidnightCowboy]

There are still quite a few modems which won't run out of the box but to test if yours is one of them, if you open your 'edit connections' there should be a tab for mobile broadband. From there go to "add" and cycle through the country and operator options. If your operator isn't listed you will need to set it up manually. Be aware also that if there is a choice of connection types for your operator, you need to select the right one otherwise you could end up with a large bill For Claro Brazil for instance I need to select "3G" and not "default" which is the first choice.

Once you've made these settings and ticked "connect automatically" it should appear in the connections menu. If not, try removing the modem, waiting ten seconds and then plugging it in again. At this point it should dial out automatically.

[1002richards]

Hi Garth,
I'm not sure where in the world you are, but to echo what Midnight Cowboy said, mobile broadband can be very easy to set up. I use Three in the UK and it's always been a few clicks to configure it in all _buntu (& derivatives) since 9.04.

I too like the look of Pinguy, very polished and its interface is a good stepping stone from Windows. Plus with it being Ubuntu based there's loads of supprt when you want to start tinkering around with it!!

Richard

[garth]

Thanks for the help guys, i got Conky switched off and got my mobile broadband working quite easily once i knew what i was looking for

One thing that is of concern to me at the moment is my machine is running very hot while using Pinguy, even just using Firefox to access this site. The fan is blowing constantly in the way it only usually does when i'm gaming hard. What i mean by gaming hard is i often run two accounts simultaneously on my laptop, with two incarnations of the game open so i can play two characters together: this obviously puts more load on my graphics processor, but i see no reason why simply running a browser to view a forum should be working the gpu so hard. Anyway, i will register on the Pinguy forum and post the question there.

Earlier i was reading a review Dedoimedo wrote about Pinguy where he makes the point that initially the desktop is very cluttered (what with app launcher docks and the Conky system monitor and whatnot) and i tend to agree with him: once i switched all this unnecessary stuff off Pinguy is a much nicer place to be, much less bewildering for a noob who is used to using Windows. Anyway, i have no intention of rehashing Dedoimedo's review beyond making that point, but for any who want to read it it can be found here.

To return to a point i made in my first post, my portable apps launcher (PortableApps.com) was the first thing i tried running with Pinguy, and all i had to do, literally, was click the application icon: the rest was done by Wine, an application that allows Windows based software to be run on Linux operating systems. What i intend to do next, once i'm certain my gpu is not about to get cooked, is find out how many of my other applications will run using Wine.

[1002richards]

Have you run "System Testing" by any chance? I ran it & my laptop nearly took off after it had run. I Googled and found that this was a feature (oops 'bug'!!) fixed by a simple re-boot.
Just a thought.

Richard

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by garth

One thing that is of concern to me at the moment is my machine is running very hot while using Pinguy, even just using Firefox to access this site. The fan is blowing constantly in the way it only usually does when i'm gaming hard.

I guess if the fan is running noticeably faster, there must be something to investigate although I do see differences between how sensors read (supposedly) the same thing. This machine for instance is dual booted with XP and Kororaa. with not much going on the XP CPU registers zero a lot of the time whereas Kororaa never gets there. In fact it's usually 4-6% with a regular spike into double figures. The CPU temp reading for XP however is 35 degrees with a fan speed of around 3500rpm, whereas for Kororaa it's 40 degrees and 3100rpm. I expected a reasonable level of CPU because KDE is heavy anyway but overall this doesn't make a lot of sense other than to suggest there is a discrepancy with the sensor readings. One version of Ubuntu was a bit notorious for running hot but I can't remember which one now.

[garth]

Originally Posted by 1002richards

Have you run "System Testing" by any chance? I ran it & my laptop nearly took off after it had run. I Googled and found that this was a feature (oops 'bug'!!) fixed by a simple re-boot.
Just a thought.

Richard

Not that i'm aware of but it's possible i may have initiated something while trying to find the Linux equivalent of the device manager. I was looking for this just to make sure all devices were functioning correctly after i became aware of the increased cooling activity.

Originally Posted by MidnightCowboy

I guess if the fan is running noticeably faster, there must be something to investigate although I do see differences between how sensors read (supposedly) the same thing. This machine for instance is dual booted with XP and Kororaa. with not much going on the XP CPU registers zero a lot of the time whereas Kororaa never gets there. In fact it's usually 4-6% with a regular spike into double figures. The CPU temp reading for XP however is 35 degrees with a fan speed of around 3500rpm, whereas for Kororaa it's 40 degrees and 3100rpm. I expected a reasonable level of CPU because KDE is heavy anyway but overall this doesn't make a lot of sense other than to suggest there is a discrepancy with the sensor readings. One version of Ubuntu was a bit notorious for running hot but I can't remember which one now.

I'm not seeing any anomalous CPU activity: the CPU is barely ticking over so no issues of any kind to report there. The gpu is being properly thrashed though, so definitely there is something to be looked at. This machine actually has two graphic adapters, both of which have an independent driver. One of them is low power for when the laptop is running off the battery, and is basically onboard graphics that uses system ram, the other kicks in automatically when the thing is running off the mains and has half a gig of dedicated memory. I can however manually select which graphics processor to use, although i'm not sure if i will be able to do this under Linux: depends if the Catalyst Control Center (graphics application) is accessible. Anyhow, i'm wondering if Pinguy is getting confused by the unconventional gpu setup on this machine.

[garth]

I've now been using this OS for a solid couple of hours and i have to say i'm liking Linux
I decided to take the step of installing it alongside Win7 to see if the issue of the machine running hot was anything to do with my running Pinguy as a live cd version: nope. The next step was to see if it was anything to do with my graphics adapter setup, so i used the update facility to find the correct driver for my graphics adapter: unfortunately i was only able to get a driver/application package for the low power graphics adapter so my machine is not going to run to it's full capability using Linux, but hey i can live with that since i only really need more graphics power for gaming, and my games are all on Windows . Anyway, this did not solve the problem of the machine running hot either, so i then proceeded to update the entire package: half a gig of updates and one restart later and problem solved, so apart from my graphics capability being crippled somewhat all is well, and now i can properly get on with exploring this fork of Ubuntu Linux.....yay

The one serious concern i have right now is the firewall does not appear to be working, and it appears to need rules defining before it will become active. This looks to be quite a complicated process and not intuitive at all, so while i can happily configure PF7 to my satisfaction i don't have a clue with this.

[MidnightCowboy]

Glad you got most of it sorted

Cant remember now which firewall Pinguy ships with. It will have IPTables by default and I guess GUFW to "look at it" with. A quick check in your installed software for UFW or GUFW will reveal what is there.

Also, if you run the GRC shields up test, you'll see that mostly it's covered anyway.

Although it's out of date now, I still prefer Firestarter because I find it easier to manage. I used to uninstall UFW and then install Firestarter. It won't show you "events" any more but it does enable easy control of ICMP settings to block ping responses and will show you a live display of current connections.